by James Parks, Aug 30, 2006

As Labor Day—the unofficial opening of the election campaign season—approaches, America’s working families are struggling hard to make ends meet. Instead of the benefits of the economic recovery that President Bush is touting, the average family’s pocketbook is stretched to the limit, and voters are fed up enough to make a sweeping change in Congress.

To make sure these economic issues stay in the forefront of the 2006 elections and that workers’ voices are heard, the AFL-CIO is launching its largest-ever off-year political mobilization. During a press conference in Washington, D.C., today, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:

This Labor Day, it appears that a “perfect storm” is gathering that may well sweep away Republican control of the Congress this fall. It is a storm fueled by three developments: 

First, profound economic trends have strained working families to the breaking point—workers are not sharing in the wealth they helped create and our nation’s economic recovery has not been a recovery for workers at all. 

Second, as you might expect, new polling shows that most voters are painfully aware of these problems and pocketbook issues will be top voting issues this fall.

And finally, the AFL-CIO is making the largest effort in our history in an off-year election, driving home these pocketbook issues. We will play the largest role we’ve ever played in electing the candidates we’ve endorsed in many of the pivotal competitive races for the House and Senate.

Workers are taking some hard hits in this economy. Workers such as Daniel Seybert, 47, a member of the USW International Union in Newton Falls, Ohio. Seybert, who earns $43,000 a year after 28 years in a tire factory, tells The Wall Street Journal:

We have been regressing, with higher gas prices and I am paying a lot
more in county and state property taxes. When I built my home in 1999, I paid $1,200 in property taxes. Now they are $2,400. That’s just money out of pocket.

In a video clip shown during the press conference, Meagan Jeronimo, a working mother, says:

I’m struggling more than I ever have before. I go to the gas pump and try to figure out how to fill my gas tank. I go to the grocery store and try to figure out how to buy my groceries.

It’s not just low-income people that are struggling with these issues. Many, many middle income workers are struggling with these issues. It’s getting harder out there and no one is listening to us.  

Jeronimo is not alone. Real median earnings for men working full-time and year-round were lower in 2005 than in 1973. In inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars, a typical full-time worker in 1973 earned $42,573. Thirty-six years later, this figure has fallen to $41,386.
 
Census Bureau figures released yesterday show the number of Americans without health insurance rose to a record in 2005—from 45.3 million in 2004 to 46.6 million in 2005. Lack of health care is just one reason why Adrianne Shropshire at DMI writes of the Labor Day blues this year.
 
Because workers such as Meagan need leaders who care about what she and her family have to face and to make the American Dream a reality, the AFL-CIO will spend $40 million in this election, Sweeney says. Most of those funds will be used to mobilize union members to vote, not for campaign contributions to individual candidates. 
 
A recent poll by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO clearly shows working families’ dissatisfaction with the economy and the Republican’s leadership:

• Fifty-five percent of those surveyed say they are very or fairly dissatisfied with the economic situation.
• More than four of five—82 percent—are concerned about the economic future of the next generation.

Such dissatisfaction could be the key issue in the election, the poll shows:

• Two of three—66 percent—say they are much more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who would require Medicare to negotiate the lowest prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. The number jumps to 73 percent among union members.A new report by the Center for Economic Policy Research shows drug companies will make nearly $50 billion in excess profits under Part D of the Bush Medicare drug program, while seniors will have to pay $3,000 out of their own pockets for drugs they need.
• Sixty-five percent—72 percent among union members—say they will vote for the candidate who would protect wages, health benefits and pensions in corporate bankruptcies.
• And 62 percent say they are much more likely to vote for a candidate who will support access to affordable health care. Among union members, such support totals 67 percent.

President Bush is out of touch with America’s working families, Sweeney says, and he predicted Bush’s agenda of tax cuts for the rich and nothing for working families will be voted down at the polls this year:

George Bush isn’t on the ballot this November, but his agenda is—and the Republicans in Congress who have rubber stamped his priorities are. They aren’t listening to working America. So from now through election day, we’re building a large enough megaphone that they’ll hear our message loud and clear.

Working people are ready for change, and they’re ready to work hard for it.

The political mobilization is just the latest in a series of strides the union movement has made in the past year, Sweeney says, that speak well for the future of the union movement and America’s working families.

• Four AFL-CIO affiliated unions, the UAW, AFT, Communications Workers of America and AFSCME will collectively spend an additional $100 million for organizing.
• The AFL-CIO’s new partnership with the NEA, which enables NEA local unions to affiliate directly with the AFL-CIO.
• Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, opened seven new offices this year, recruiting 200,000 new members a month this summer.
• The AFL-CIO union movement formed a new partnership with the nation’s largest organization of worker centers to work with day laborers in protecting the rights of all workers.
• The AFL-CIO is working in 19 states on legislation or ballot initiatives that would raise the minimum wage, as well as working for a national raise.
• At the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the AFL-CIO has made the first major infusion of private capital, from any source, into the region with a $1 billion investment program for housing and other infrastructure on the Gulf Coast.

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